This expanded issue of Aviation Week’s Defense Technology International edition is the first of a series planned to coincide with major defense shows worldwide. This week, the Association of the U.S. Army convention and show opens in Washington—an event that grew rapidly during the 2000s as the U.S. committed soldiers and weapons to the longest land conflict in its history.
At 7,000 troops, the Peace Mission 2014 military exercise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was not large militarily. But its geopolitical importance was considerable: It was the biggest exercise to date for a budding anti-democratic alliance that includes two nuclear powers and could soon gain three more.
With the evolution of modern satellite-based navigation, miniaturized inertial measurement systems, advanced electro-optical and laser sensors and powerful yet compact computing and advanced data links, robots are becoming smart enough to carry out autonomous missions as efficiently, or better than, their human counterparts.
Combining assets to defeat the rocket, artillery and mortar (RAM) threat has proven successful, but other traditional threats (aircraft/cruise missile) and emerging asymmetric ones (unmanned air systems) still have been treated separately. The RAM experience suggested an integrated approach to defeating these threats and to the acquisition process. This approach unites sensor, weapons and mission-command components with a standard set of interfaces using a standardized set of networks to communicate—a meta-system for air defense.
While the U.S. Special Operations Command has seen its force size and budget grow despite the current fiscal austerity sweeping Washington, it is looking not for new platforms but for ways of obtaining more data from its existing unmanned air systems, especially small ones such as AeroVironment’s man-portable, hand-launched RQ-11 Raven.
Developments in next-gen wearable and handheld IT products to bolster soldiers’ gear has lagged at some companies, but not at Chemring Technology Solutions
